Liparus captain
Unnamed, the character was a fictional high-ranking member of the Stromberg Shipping who served as captain of the supertanker Liparus, secretly a vessel devised by Karl Stromberg to fulfill his ambitions of nuclear war. A major antagonist, the captain appeared in the 1977 James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me, portrayed by the late British actor Sydney Tafler. Biography Background The captain, ostensibly a high-ranking employee of the Stromberg Shipping, was a key member of the conspiracy by Karl Stromberg to incite nuclear war between the United States and Soviet Union in order to cleanse the world and start a new civilization under the ocean. In this capacity, he captained the pride of the Stromberg fleet, the Liparus, and orchestrated its capture of the British HMS Ranger and the Soviet submarine Potemkin, using a state-of-the-art submarine tracking system developed by Dr. Bechmann and Professor Markovitz. As a result of these actions, the differences of the Cold War were temporarily set aside by the American, British and Soviet governments, the latter two of whom dedicated their best agents, James Bond and Anya Amasova respectively, to cooperatively countering Stromberg's ambitions. Capturing another vessel By the time this compromise was underway, the Liparus and his captain were tracking a third submarine, the USS Wayne, which was eventually captured in the presence of Stromberg himself. However, unknown to the captain and his henchmen, Bond and Amasova had stowed away aboard the Wayne in anticipation of its capture by Stromberg, and were hoping to use the event as an opportunity to infiltrate the Liparus. As the captain and Stromberg watched, Amasova was exposed by a henchman and both she and Bond were swiftly overwhelmed and captured. Crewmembers escorted the two detainees to Stromberg, who pontificated the failures of the modern world before ordering the captain to incarcerate Bond with the rest of the prisoners, while the Soviet agent would accompany him to wait out the apocalypse in Atlantis. War in Liparus However, Bond escaped and freed the American, British and Soviet crews from their confinement. Angered by this development, the captain ordered the crew to slaughter the escapees while sealing the operations room and ordering a firing line of henchmen to man the arrowslits in the room's nearly-impenetrable armor. Outside, a prolonged battle between the submarine crews and the captain's subordinates eventually forced the latter to withdraw, although at great cost. During this climatic battle, the captain contacted Stromberg to inform him of the prisoner breakout, but was optimistic that his troops would be able to contain both the insurrection and the fires that had begun onboard as a result of the fighting. Stromberg coldly dismisses the captain's assurances and demands that his plans continue as scheduled before terminating the connection. Death After the conclusion of the skirmish, Bond eventually used a detonator from one of the stolen nuclear warheads pilfered from the submarines to blow open the control room. This allowed the liberated crew to rush the bewildered Stromberg troops, and in the ensuing chaos, the captain was shot and severely wounded. Before dying, the captain taunted Bond that the submarines are already on station and that the missiles would be launched in four minutes. He then perished at Bond's feet, believing that the plans of his master had come to fruition. Bond, working with Commander Carter from the Wayne, manages to deceive the captured submarines into destroying each other with their missiles at the last moment, however. As the Liparus, heavily damaged during the earlier fighting, began to explode, Bond and the surviving members of the submarine crews evacuated, leaving the captain's body to the sea. Behind the scenes The captain was played by the late Sydney Tafler. This appearance was his final film credit before he passed in 1979. Gallery References Category:James Bond characters Category:Film characters Category:The Spy Who Loved Me characters Category:Villains Category:Henchmen Category:Male characters Category:Military figures Category:Military Villains Category:Unnamed characters Category:Pawns Category:Fictional terrorists Category:Deceased characters Category:Characters killed by other characters